This document discusses adventure games and walking simulators, and their potential in virtual reality. It notes that adventure games are narrative and character-driven, without violence or resource management. Walking simulators focus on exploration and discovery through a leisurely pace. Challenges in VR include the interface, identity issues from embodying an avatar, and potential disembodiment. A case study discusses translating the TV show Rick and Morty into a VR adventure. Overall, the document analyzes the storytelling potential of adventure-style games in VR, but notes technical and narrative hurdles that must be addressed to fully realize this potential.

1. You’re the Star of the Story?
Adventure Games in Virtual Reality
Anastasia Salter
@anasalter
University of Central Florida

2. Adventure Games:
Non-violent, narrative, character-driven play
For more detail, see:
Mark Meadows, Pause and Effect
Espen Aarseth, Quest Games
Clara Fernandez-Vera, Shaping Player
Experience in Adventure Games
Anastasia Salter, What is Your Quest?

6. The many (mostly white male) faces of classic adventure games…
Image by Salvini

7. Walking Simulators: Adventuring via Exploration

9. An aesthetic practice of walking seems to have moved
beyond the 19th century Romantics, transcended the
physical and manifested in the virtual through walking
simulators such as Year Walk, Gone Home and Dear
Esther. The playful readings of places have become
designed games revolving around a story to be
uncovered by a solitary player.
Carbo-Mascarell, Rosa. "Walking Simulators: The Digitisation of an Aesthetic Practice." DiGRA/FDG.
2016.

12. “Walking simulators” can be described as the discovery of
“slowness” in video games. These kinds of games feature a
leisurely pace, and often lack opportunities for interaction that
are connected to the topics of fighting and resource
management (e.g. there are no enemies to kill, and no depleting
stocks of any kind). In comparison, the design in many current
AAA video game titles focus on keeping the player busy. In
addition, on-screen info displays are rare in these kinds of
games.
Koenitz, Hartmut. "Beyond “Walking Simulators”–Games as the Narrative Avant-Garde." (2017).

13. Virtual Reality
(or, “not a film and not an empathy machine”)
Janet Murray
Read:
https://immerse.news/not-a-film-and-
not-an-empathy-machine-
48b63b0eda93

14. Adventure Gamers on the Holodeck
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

18. Challenges facing VR Narrative Games
1. Interface
2. Identity
3. Disembodiment
(especially for those othered by typical VR bodies)

19. Case Study: Rick and Morty, Adventure -> VR

24. 1. The VR Identity Crisis

25. It's frustrating, not having a good clear access to what exactly the
protagonist really knows. The player is stuck running around doing his best
to look out for this character's interests without having full access to his
memories or total control over his thoughts.
And yet that too factors very effectively into the characterization: the player
is coping with the constraints imposed by the narrative, while the
protagonist is struggling with a long-term devotion to cheap whiskey. The
player would like to know more.
Gradually those two desires converge. In the winning playthrough, the
player-protagonist finally achieves both agency and understanding.
Emily Short
The Accretive Character Player (2009)

27. Third-person action games are fine, but leave you
feeling like you could’ve experienced the same on
a normal monitor. But first-person adventures?
Pretend I just kissed my fingertips like a French
chef or whatever.
Hayden Dingman, reviewing The Assembly
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3090088/software/the-assembly-hands-on-the-future-of-vr-is-
adventure-games.html

28. 2. Interface
(or, these hands are not your hands)

29. 3. Disembodiment
…leaving you behind?

30. Thank you!
Anastasia Salter / @anasalter